The jackal that turned into a wolf: new species discovered in Africa

There’s another wolf in the world, according to results published yesterday in Current Biology . The discovery of the species, called the African golden wolf (Canis anthus ), effectively increases the number of living canid species from 35 to 36. Golden wolves were previously lumped with golden jackals (C. aureus ), which are widespread through northern half of Africa and into parts of Eurasia. But genetic analyses found that populations in eastern Africa are quite distinct from Eurasian golden jackals, and have much more in common with gray wolves (C. lupus ) and coyotes (C. latrans ). “This represents the first discovery of a ‘new’ canid species in Africa in over 150 years,” says Klaus-Peter Koepfli of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Washington, DC. Koepfli led the study along with Robert Wayne of the University of California, Los Angeles. A golden jack...